


The Paladins Who Couldn’t Breathe (Finished)

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Choking, Coughing, Delirium, Fever, Hanahaki Disease, Heavy Angst, Hunk (Voltron) is a Good Friend, Hurt Lance (Voltron), M/M, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Sick Character, Sick Keith (Voltron), Sort Of, Stabbing, Suicide Attempt, Whump, With A Twist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:28:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23240239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Coran had never seen Hanahaki Disease in humans before and had no idea how it would truly effect Keith. While everyone kept an eye on Keith they didn’t anticipate that leaving him alone with Lance would have dire consequences.Keith let go of the knife.Lance was rigid, eyes wide as saucers, his hand hovering over his own throat.Keith would never forget the look in those eyes.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 137





	The Paladins Who Couldn’t Breathe (Finished)

It started with a trip to find a rare ore.

The uninhabited planet ended up being covered in thorny vines, one of which was reluctant to leave it’s place nestled in Hunk’s abdomen.

“Shit, I can’t get it out!” said Hunk, pulling his body back but not wanted to yank it out by hand without a thornless area on the vine to hold for purchase.

“Let me” said Keith. He grabbed the vine, thorns and all, and ripped it out with only minor bleeding. Hunk yelled.

“You didn’t have to do that” he gasped.

“Sorry, I should have known that would hurt.”

Hunk shook his head. “No, it’s not that, it’s just…your hand.”

Keith looked at his hand. It was bleeding pretty decently from the puncture wounds.

“Oh.”

❀❀❀

After some bandaging up Keith didn’t think much of his hand. He was more concerned with the growing soreness in his throat and the coughing that came after.

“Hey man, what’s wrong?” asked Lance when their sparring was cut off by hacking and gagging.

“I’m -hgg- okay…” gasped Keith.

“You don’t sound like it” said Lance with a frown. He rubbed Keith’s back in circles while he caught his breath.

Lance was always so soft on Keith when he was concerned. It put butterflies in Keith’s stomach when Lance went from sharp banter to gentle caring so quickly.

“Maybe you’re right…” said Keith.

“You should go see if Coran can help. I could walk you there?”

Keith was embarrassed but he nodded. On the way there he had another fit and when he stopped he took his hand from his mouth and stared at what was in it. Lance leaned over and followed Keith’s gaze.

There was a blue flower petal in Keith’s hands.

“I don’t think that’s normal” said Lance.

Keith chuckled a little which sent him into another fit.

❀❀❀

“That’s quite a fever, son. How long have you had this cough?” asked Coran.

Keith finished gulping down his water.

“About a movement and a half” he rasped. “Right after we went to Wexith for that metal stuff.”

“Could he have gotten some kind of alien flu from there?” asked Lance.

“Doubtful if he kept his helmet on and decontaminated when he returned” replied Coran. “You did follow those protocols, right Number 4?”

“Yes” said Keith.

“Besides the coughing are there any other symptoms?”

Lance looked at Keith. Keith opened his hand.

“I coughed this up.”

Coran paled.

“That’s… I’ll need to sample it and run some tests.”

“You know what it is?”

“I… I won’t know for sure until we have the results.”

❀❀❀

While waiting for the results everyone kept an eye on Keith, Shiro taking time away from battle strategies and diplomatic communications to check on him. Keith was still a little embarrassed. He felt like a child.

“I have to go talk to Allura but I’ll come back later. Keep drinking water” said Shiro, patting Keith’s leg over the blanket he was bundled up in.

“Yes mom” joked Keith. Shiro winked as he walked out and Keith tried not to laugh.

“Hey, mullet man. Who has two thumbs and soup?” asked Lance when he trotted in.

“Uh, Hunk because you can’t cook for crap?”

“But soup is hardly cooking! And you don’t know that Hunk only has two thumbs. He could be hiding another somewhere!”

Keith laughed but started coughing. Lance rushed over and sat beside him to rub his back.

“I forgot that I shouldn’t make you laugh.”

Hunk came in with the soup. “I have soup!”

Soup was starting to not sound like a word anymore.

“Thank you” said Keith. “But you didn’t have to do that” he said, echoing Hunk from when Keith pulled out the vine before.

“I totally did. Soup makes you feel better!”

“Oh Hunk, my buddy, my pal, mi amigo, did you forget Lance? I have a serious soup deficiency!” said Lance, draping himself over Hunk melodramatically.

“I _may_ have made a couple of extra servings. But you owe me one” said Hunk.

“No problem!” And Lance was running to the kitchen.

Lance’s ridiculousness would probably help Keith feel better more than the soup.

❀❀❀

When the results were in everyone could tell it was bad just from Coran’s expression.

“This” started Coran, holding up a clear bag with a flower petal in it, “is the flower of a plant known colloquially around the universe as a ‘forlorner’. It is a symbol of the desire for the unattainable, and also hopelessness.”

“Okay…” said Shiro, perplexed.

“Keith coughed this up. It came from inside of him” explained Coran.

Everyone was disturbed.

“Are there flowers _growing_ in him?!” asked Hunk.

“Precisely” said Coran.

“This sounds familiar…” said Allura.

“It does!” piped up Pidge. “I just read about this recently! Crap, it’s Hanahaki isn’t it?”

Coran nodded sadly.

“Can we stop discussing me right in front of me? I’d like to join the conversation of my own health, thank you.”

After a chorus of quiet apologies Keith went on.

“What is Hanahaki?”

“The disease enters the blood stream through a cut or open wound. Many don’t know they carry it because symptoms only emerge if the sufferer has unrequited feelings of love for another.”

Everyone looked at Keith. He shrunk in his chair.

“The flowers grow in the airways and become more invasive unless- I’m sorry, Keith- but untreated it is fatal.”

Before anyone could react Shiro stepped forward.

“What’s the treatment?” he demanded.

“If the love is returned the flowers will be purged, otherwise they must be surgically removed. Carefully. Now I pride myself in my medical knowledge but I’m not exactly a surgeon.”

“Can’t a pod help?” asked Keith, panicking a little.

“Healing pods have limitations, I’m afraid.”

Keith erupted into another coughing fit. Lance tried to rest a hand on his back but Keith shrugged him off. 

He didn’t want to be under Lance’s gaze and Lance’s touch almost burned. He walked quickly out of the room, still hacking and coughing. Shiro ran after him.

“Keith loves someone who doesn’t love him back?” said Allura, thinking out loud.

The question of whether it was any of them hung in the air.

Lance just wished that _he_ had ran after Keith instead of Shiro. He wanted to be by Keith’s side, not only because he was Keith’s comrade but because it was just so ironic.

It was so ironic that Keith was the one with Hanahaki yet Lance loved Keith and there was no way that Keith could love him back.

❀❀❀

Keith deteriorated rapidly. His fevers would get so high that he became confused and skittish. Medicine never helped and he was left to keep gagging on flowers and blood into a bin.

“Are you sure that they don’t love you back?” asked Lance for the umpteenth time as he placed a wet cloth on Keith’s forehead.

“Positive” said Keith. “I wish you’d stop asking me that.”

“I’m sorry, it’s just... you don’t want to risk the surgery, but if we do nothing you’ll... I just don’t want to lose you, okay?”

Keith didn’t know what to say. It was painful to hear Lance say things like that because he knew that Lance only meant it as a friend. Lance flirted with Allura in the beginning and Keith figured that even though he hadn’t for a while he still had feelings for her. Not only that but all of the teasing and playfulness between him and Lance... that’s not how love worked, right? It was supposed to be serious and mushy.

He never even talked to Lance about his feelings but it was because he knew he’d be disappointed. He wasn't about to now because he would hate for Lance to realize that he was the reason Keith was dying.

❀❀❀

“I think that it might be you” said Lance one day.

“Huh?” said Hunk.

”I think you might be the one Keith has a crush on.”

“ _Me?_ What makes you think that?”

“Well, didn’t you say he grabbed those thorns and hurt his hand to pull that vine out of you? And then he got Hanahaki right after. Plus, you’re a really kind person.”

“Well, it’d make sense that he’s not recovering if it’s me… because I really _don’t_ like him like that. Like, romantically. Thanks for saying I’m kind, but now I feel like a big jerk.”

“Hey, I only speak the truth, buddy. You _are_ kind. And you can’t help your own feelings. But now I kind of feel bad, too. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. Feelings are complicated.”

Boy, did Lance know about that.

It was agony seeing Keith suffer. Lance loved him so much, and he couldn’t turn that love off. But with how harsh he treated Keith in school, and when they first became paladins, Keith couldn’t have loved Lance back.

Yet every time Lance looked at Keith, was close to his face all blushed with fever and his eyes all sparkling and wet, he thought that Keith looked beautiful in his sickness. Lance felt guilty for thinking that. 

This was a complete mess and they were running out of time. Lance had to convince Keith to let Coran try to remove the flowers. Even if he didn’t make it through it was better than slowly choking to death on them.

Lance selfishly couldn’t handle that happening to Keith anyway.

❀❀❀

Keith woke dazed and nauseous. The room was blurry. He was scared, anxious of things getting worse. As he moved to sit on the edge of his bed he felt like it wasn’t even him moving, or that he was watching himself from a distance.

His sense of danger was aroused.

Keith moved his pillow and held his heirloom knife. The shine on it swirled and spiraled in his eyes. He tucked it into his belt. He felt safer when he had something on him to defend himself with.

Stumbling into the lounge room he met Lance.

“Keith. Did your nap help at all?” asked Lance softly, moving a hand up to cup the nape of Keith’s neck.

His fingers were under Keith’s hair and cool against the heat of Keith’s skin. Keith sighed a raspy sigh. Lance was good. Lance was always making him feel better.

“…Keith?” asked Lance, frowning slightly.

Where did Lance’s smile go? He shouldn’t be frowning, he didn’t _deserve_ to lose his smile-

Wait. Yes he did. Lance was the reason Keith was going to die. It was all Lance’s fault.

_All. His. Fault._

Keith pulled the knife from his belt and jammed it into Lance’s throat in one swift movement.

_Wait, no no no no, that wasn’t right! He didn’t mean to-_

He let go of the knife, leaving it dangling out of the other boy’s neck.

Lance was rigid, eyes wide as saucers, his hand hovering over his own throat. He tried to speak but gurgled instead, a bit of blood tricking down from his lip.

Keith would never forget the look in those eyes. Fear and disbelief and _hurt._

But Keith just moved forward and slammed Lance to the ground.

He roughly grabbed Lance’s head by the hair and bashed it against the hard floor, over and over again. He coughed flowers onto him even as he kept up his attack. Blood started to push out from around the knife on Lance’s neck.

Eventually Keith tired, everything spinning, unable to find Lance in all of the red. He knew that Lance was hurt but he couldn’t remember why. Why was Lance on the ground and bleeding? He had to help him!

Keith needed to run for help. He somehow stood and went out of the room into the hall. He tripped and pulled himself back up with the corner of the wall.

Eventually he went through doors but forgot where he was or what he was doing. He saw a bed and let himself fall into it face first.

Maybe he just needed a rest.

❀❀❀

The whole castle, minus Keith, ran towards a scream.

Pidge was kneeling besides Lance in so much blood.

“ _Quiznak,_ Lance!”

Shiro was the first to get by Pidge’s side and see the knife jutting out of Lance’s neck. Lance kept weakly reaching for it while he choked on it and Shiro gently held Lance’s hands away from it.

“Don’t take it out yet- you’ll lose what little blood you have left!”

That made Lance stop.

Now, Coran didn’t like to call himself a surgeon but he managed to remove the knife before Lance drowned in his own blood and stitched him up better than Lance’s own sewing experience. And that was saying something.

❀❀❀

Keith’s thoughts and memories were assaulting him.

He saw Lance bathed in red, choking on metal, and staring at Keith with wide eyes. Keith kept seeing the knife everywhere. He thought he saw it on his bed but it was gone. He thought he saw it on the floor but it was gone.

He felt guilt and sorrow but he didn’t know why.

He coughed and hacked and all of the blood in the flowers only reminded him. He would smell blood forever.

_He couldn’t handle this lasting forever._

Keith’s arms moved on their own. He took his jacket off and stumbled over to the hook he usually hung it on by the doors.

He hung the jacket by the back of it’s collar with muscle memory, on autopilot, until he turned himself around and leaned his head against it and started to wrap it’s sleeves around his throat.

_But he didn’t want to die. He wanted to make sure that Lance was okay…_

He tied the sleeves into a tight knot and relaxed his body to hang by it. He couldn’t breathe and it hurt his neck. But he was so tired.

Keith fell asleep again.

❀❀❀

While Shiro helped Lance into a healing pod Hunk realized something.

“Where’s Keith?” he asked nervously.

Shiro mentally smacked himself. “Damn. Nobody’s checked on him recently, and he was getting worse, too.”

“Yeah, and it’s not just that. That’s _Keith’s knife_ ” said Hunk.

Everyone took in the implications of that. 

Hunk ran to find Keith. He ignored Allura calling after him that this meant that Keith was dangerous.

It didn’t matter. Lance was safe now but Keith was sick and confused and it was _all Hunk’s fault._

❀❀❀

Hunk decided to check Keith’s room first. It was a good thing that he did.

At first Hunk didn’t see him. He walked right in, saw no sign of him besides dried flowers, but as he turned around to leave he screeched when he was face to face with a corpse hanging on the wall beside the doors.

Well, at least Keith _looked_ like a corpse, all blue like that. But Hunk wasn’t ready to assume that it was too late.

“It’s going to be okay. We’ll fix you up and you’ll feel all better soon” Hunk babbled as he clumsily untangled the jacket sleeves. Keith slipped out and slid into Hunk’s arms.

“I got you” said Hunk. He gently layed Keith on the floor. It was quiet without any coughing. Hunk shuddered.

“Breathe, Keith. Please.” Hunk begged. He felt his pulse. It was actually still there, but barely.

“Come on, please. You’ll feel better. I know I don’t deserve it, but please do it for me!”

_Shit, what was he even doing, wasting time like this?_

Hunk put his mouth on Keith’s and started rescue breathing. 

When Keith finally coughed Hunk did too, biting some flower petals before spitting them out.

❀❀❀

Lance stepped out of the healing pod. He saw Coran fussing by someone’s bedside. Coran turned around.

“Oh, Lance-!” started Coran.

But Lance had already started panicking.

Keith was in the bed, strapped down like some sort of animal or science experiment. Lance couldn’t even look at Keith right now, let alone like _that._

So Lance ran until he found Hunk and threw himself into his arms.

❀❀❀

“Stop blaming yourself already” said Lance.

“Realistically I know it’s not my fault, but if Keith didn’t feel so unloved none of this would have happened” said Hunk.

Lance sighed.

For a second there when he came out of his pod Lance was afraid of Keith. Having someone stab you and hold you down to beat you would do that. But when he remembered how Keith was completely out of it, and after Hunk told Lance about how he’d found Keith in his room… things were complicated. And Keith was still choking on flowers in the pod room as they spoke.

Lance was working up the courage to have his last moments with Keith before he died. It wouldn’t be long because the disease had advanced too far for surgery to help.

He was going to tell Keith that he loved him.

❀❀❀

Coran gave Lance privacy when he asked for it. So he approached Keith alone. It was just the two of them.

Keith wasn’t strapped down anymore. He was too weak to hurt anyone, not even himself. He was in and out of consciousness. He was pale and skinny.

There was a small bouquet of blue flowers blooming from his open mouth.

He could hardly breathe around them and their roots, desperate wheezing filling the room. Lance all but ran towards Keith and held his hand. Keith whimpered and almost flinched away.

“Keith, I should have come sooner- we’re good, okay? We’re good. More than good. I love you so much.”

Keith could only look up at Lance. He started coughing and it sounded so _painful_. Lance couldn’t rub Keith’s back when he was laying on it so he rubbed his chest instead. Keith closed his eyes and Lance was glad that he could soothe him even a little bit.

“I… I have to tell you, Keith, I love you. Not just love, but _love_ love. You’re so fearless and strong and smart and- and everything _I’ve_ always wanted to be. Yeah, I used to be jealous but now I _admire_ you. I don’t want to lose you because I’m _in_ love with you.”

Keith froze. He stopped breathing.

“Keith?! Oh no, not yet-”

“Hhhh! Kgggh!!” Keith gasped, shaking, his hands moving like he was trying to grab something. Lance grabbed both of his hands.

“Easy, easy! Damn, I didn’t want to upset you! I’m sorry!”

Keith was trying to do something with Lance’s hand. He managed to turn Lance’s hand palm-up. He started rubbing and poking it with his finger.

“What are you even doing?” said Lance.

Keith kept rubbing the same pattern over and over again. A long stroke, a swirl –

Wait. Were those letters?

L-O-V-E-Y-O-U-T-O-O-I-L-O-V-E-L-O-V-E-Y-O-U-T-O-O-

Lance put his hand on his mouth, tears starting to sting his eyes.

L-O-V-E-L-O-V-E-L-O-V-E-L-O-V-E-

Lance leaned his face down an inch away from Keith’s.

“You can’t… _me?_ It’s been me the whole time?” he whispered.

Keith nodded hard. Lance smiled and laughed hysterically.

“I… we’re so dumb!”

He kissed Keith over the flowers.

“Mmph!” said Keith.

Lance pulled back.

“Uh- did that hurt?”

Keith shook his head. He coughed and flowers scattered in Lance’s face. Keith kept coughing and almost the entire bouquet had detached.

“Hey- good, Keith, get it out!”

Lance helped Keith on his side and patted his back while whole flowers and pieces of stem came out. His retching was so loud that Coran ran in. His eyes widened.

Keith took a break from hacking up flowers to give Coran a weak smile.

❀❀❀

“I still can’t believe you thought it was _Hunk._ ” said Keith.

“I can’t cook for crap so it couldn’t have been me!” said Lance. Keith shoved his shoulder.

“What’s wrong with Hunk?” asked Hunk as he walked in.

Keith’s smile fell. “I didn’t- no offense, man-”

Hunk laughed. “It’s fine, dude. I was all ate up thinking it was me when I didn’t feel that way so it’s a total relief. Well, besides the relief of you not being dead and all.”

“You know, Hunk took the second best care of you while you were sick, Keith!” said Lance.

“And I appreciate it. Sorry that I don’t remember much, though. Everything’s kind of a blur” said Keith.

“That’s probably for the best. Hey, what do mean second best, Lance?!” said Hunk.

“I was the best caregiver! I gave Keith blankets and towels!”

“But I made the soup!”

Why did the word ‘soup’ irritate Keith?

“Hey” said Lance. “You feeling okay?”

Keith kissed Lance on the lips. Lance melted like butter and Hunk chuckled.

“I am now” said Keith.

They needed to stop and have some serious talks eventually. Shiro kept insisting on the importance of communication, especially after learning how Keith recovered. But right now it was okay to just relax.

And breathe.

**Author's Note:**

> the ending feels familiar so i’m sorry if it’s similar to something already written


End file.
